Easy Migration from T1 to Ethernet

By: John Shepler

A lot of companies that have depended on T1 lines for years, even decades, are getting to the point where the available bandwidth just isn’t enough anymore. What’s the logical upgrade? Right now what makes the sense for most businesses is Ethernet. Fortunately, the upgrade path is easy and cost effective.

Don’t Write Off T1 Yet
T1 isn’t done, by any means. T1 lines are so entrenched in telco infrastructure that they are almost universally available. This is one of the big draws of T1. It was designed by the telephone industry to serve the telephone industry. When computer communications came along, T1 lines were adapted to connect machine to machine. With 1.5 Mbps bi-directional capacity, T1 has ruled small and even medium business connections. Unfortunately, 1.5 Mbps is barely broadband anymore.

So, do you have to dump your trusty T1 line to get more bandwidth? Actually, no, but it might be advantageous.

Bonding for Higher Bandwidth
You may not realize it, but it is possible to at least double or triple your T1 bandwidth right now. The way you do this is to order additional T1 lines from the same vendor and have them bonded into one larger line service. Bonded T1 ranges from 3 to 12 Mbps. That’s still plenty for many applications. As long as you have additional unused copper telephone pairs coming into your facility, you can likely get more bandwidth.

So, why not just do this upgrade and leave well enough alone? In some cases, this is exactly the right move. Out in the countryside, T1 is often the only professional grade bandwidth available. However, there is a price to be paid. That is, 2x T1 lines cost twice as much as one. Eight T1 lines cost 8 times what you pay now for a single line. That can be more than many budgets can handle.

More Bandwidth For Less Money
Most business locations are within the city or suburbs and have another interesting option. It’s called Ethernet over Copper or EoC. This is the simple upgrade path from T1 because it uses the same twisted copper pair that bring in your T1 lines. Like bonded T1, EoC uses multiple wire pairs to increase bandwidth. The difference is that Ethernet over Copper may be able to give you a LOT more bandwidth.

The basis of EoC is a newer modulation scheme that is more efficient in transporting packets over copper wires. Common bandwidth levels start at 3 Mbps and go up from there. How much higher? Popular choices are 10 to 12 Mbps, 15, 20 and even 50 Mbps in some areas. The hitch is that EoC technology is dependent on distance from the telco office. Distance doesn’t matter much to T1. But, then again, you won’t be getting 20 or 50 Mbps out of bonded T1.

The cost structure is also different. Ethernet over Copper can give you at least twice the bandwidth for the same money. In other words, 3 Mbps EoC costs about the same as 1.5 Mbps T1. As you increase bandwidth, the cost differences are dramatic. You may be able to get 10 Mbps EoC for just a fraction of what bonded T1 would cost.

When 100 Mbps or More is Needed
It used to be that higher bandwidths, including DS3 at 45 Mbps and OC3 at 155 Mbps, were expensive and hard to get. Now DS3 has come down in price so that it is affordable by many smaller and medium size companies. A newer service, Ethernet over Fiber (EoF), starts at 10 Mbps and goes up to at least 10 Gbps capability.

You read that right. The same fiber line can bring you anywhere from an entry level service of 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet, and 10,000 Mbps 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Even 100 Gbps is available in some metro areas.

Where It’s All Going
Fiber is the future. Eventually, all that copper in the ground will be recycled or be left to eventually corrode away. That’s not today, as Ethernet over Copper has given all those old telco lines a new lease on life. However, many businesses are discovering that Ethernet fiber is also both available and quite reasonably priced. They can have EoF installed with a 100 Mbps port and start off paying for only 10 Mbps. A simple phone call to the provider can then speed up the line to 50 or 100 Mbps. Install a Gigabit Ethernet port to begin with and you can get any speed from to 10 Mbps to 1000 Mbps without making any equipment changes.

Are you ready to migrate from T1 to Ethernet to get more bandwidth at a better price? If so, quickly check your copper and fiber Ethernet options now.

Dual Core, Quad Core, Up to 64 Core Managed Dedicated Servers

It’s no secret that the battle for higher processor speeds is over. After a decades of moving up the Megahertz clock speed ramp, things have leveled off at somewhere 2 and 3 GHz. So, is that it? The end to Moore’s law? Of course not. The quest for speed has simply shifted to a different approach. Instead of faster clocks, the throughput gains are now achieved with multiple cores and processors.

The good news is that there is more than enough processing power to be had. The better news is that you can get that processing at excellent prices including top quality support with managed dedicated servers.

The low end is dual core running on a single processor. From there, you can move up to quad core and HEXA core (6 cores). Not enough horsepower? OK, then it’s time to upgrade to a dual or quad processor dedicated server. Each processor has multiple cores, of course. That extends your server’s core count to 8, 16, 32 or 64 cores.

With that much processing power at your command, you’ll need a few other things to ensure that you get the most out of all those cores. Consider that an AMD Quad x 15 CORES 2.1 GHz Opteron 6272 system with a total of 64 cores has something like 134 GHz of composite processing power and you know that you’ll need both bandwidth and memory to keep the processors loaded.

DDR3 SDRAM ranges from 8 GB on up to 512 GB. SATA Disk Drives range from 500 GB single drives on up to 4x SAS RAID 10 spinning at 15,000 RPM or an 8 x SSD RAID 10 solid state drive. Additional storage arrays can be added up to 14x SAS Drives.

How about bandwidth? Pick either a Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) or a Gigabit Ethernet (1,000 Mbps) uplink port and 10,000 GB or 12,000 GB of monthly transfer, or an unmetered port with bandwidth ranging from 10 Mbps on up to 100 Mbps.

Who offers these high performance dedicated server options with 100% uptime guarantee and outstanding support? It’s Liquid Web, a managed hosting company with multiple data centers serving over 20,000 clients in over 120 countries for the last 15 years. Their 200+ on-site staff members offer something called “heroic support.” It comes in three levels, fully managed, core managed and self-managed, depending on how much help you need and want.

All Heroic Support options feature 24x7x365 phone, email and live chat support, tier/level 3 technicians, the highest grade, on the site at all times, system level health monitoring, graphing, level monitoring alerts and notification, with a 100% uptime SLA on the fully managed hardware and network infrastructure.

The core managed option adds full installation and support of the core software package, with system updates and patches, security enhancements, full web server support, proactive response and restoration of monitoring events, all with a 30 minute initial response time guarantee.

Fully managed support adds virus and spam protection, full control panel support, updates and patches, external migrations and best effort third party application support.

Do you need higher performance servers to handle your demanding applications? Are you less than impressed with the support you receive now? Are you paying far more than you need to for the resources that you require? If so you may be a perfect candidate for Liquid Web traditional, VPS, cloud or managed dedicated server solutions. Check out their extensive range of services and that unique “Heroic Support.”

Why Get Fiber Services From A Cable Company?

When we consider purchasing new or replacement fiber optic services, the first thing that comes to mind is the telecom companies. That is, the telephone companies and the competitive service providers or CLECs. Most bandwidth providers have their own core network facilities but rent lines from the telcos for last mile connections. This is especially true with SONET services that originated in the telephone industry.

There is a type of fiber optic service provider that doesn’t use telco facilities at all. That is the cable companies or MSOs (Multi System Operators.) The reason is that cable systems were all built from the ground up to serve a specialized market for television signal distribution to homes and businesses. In fact, most cable systems have been built from the ground up twice. The first implementation used large diameter coaxial cable to transport the combined TV signals picked up from over the air and satellite downlinks. The second implementation was an upgrade to use fiber optic cable for signal distribution to the neighborhoods, while keeping small diameter coax for the final connection.

This system is known as HFC or Hybrid Fiber Coax. Nearly everyone recognizes the 75 ohm coax and F type connector used for Cable TV work. What most people aren’t aware of is the extensive fiber optic infrastructure in place behind the scenes. The larger cable systems have thousands of miles of fiber optic cabling, some cables with 100 or more fiber strands. These cables run all over town and often between towns as well. Nationwide cable companies have nationwide fiber optic networks.

Television is the primary content transported by the cable fiber, but there is also a lot of telephone, Internet and point to point data traffic. Ever since television went digital, there is little difference with how you transport video and how you transport other services. It’s all bits and bytes.

The cable companies have recognized this and recently started marketing their capabilities to businesses. The low end services are delivered over broadband coaxial cable. Some of the most popular services are the shared bandwidth Internet access tiers up to 100 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload. This service is priced about the same as a T1 line but can serve many more employees using the Internet. Cable broadband is often used to feed WiFi hotspots for restaurants, hotels and other retail locations.

Many businesses, especially larger ones, don’t want the variability and lack of guarantees associated with shared bandwidth services, even at bargain prices. They need rock solid symmetrical bandwidth and guaranteed parameters for latency, jitter, bandwidth, packet loss and availability. The other thing they need is higher bandwidth levels for connecting multiple business locations and cloud services.

Many cable companies are eager for this premium level of business. They’re now in a position to provide it with some unique benefits as well. One major benefit is complete diversity from the telecom system for redundancy needed for business continuity. If you want to protect your connectivity from outages, you need a redundant connection. If that connection goes right to the same central office as the main connection, you haven’t added much redundancy. A fire or equipment at the CO can take out both your connections. So can a cable break if both your fiber strands are in the same bundle.

You won’t have that problem if one of your fiber services comes from a telecom company and one from a cable company. They have nothing in common to be a single point of failure. If the whole town gets wiped out, you may still have a problem. But that needs to be addressed with geographical diversity from multiple business locations.

What can cable providers offer in the way of fiber optic services? Typically, you can get 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps Ethernet over Fiber that is MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum) compliant. That includes point to point private lines, dedicated Internet access and MPLS networks that interconnect multiple locations. Those locations can be in the same metro area or they can be scattered around the country. Many cable companies have NNI (Network to Network Interface) agreements with other companies so that traffic can be passed from system to system.

What is the interface to these cable systems? You can often get your choice of a copper or fiber handoff at the demarcation point in your building. One standard arrangement is for the cable company to install a Gigabit Ethernet port regardless of the bandwidth level you are contracting. That way, if you decide you want a higher bandwidth level they can turn in up by simply making a few keystrokes into the system. No hardware changes will be necessary until you want to move up to a 10 GigE port.

Do cable system fiber optic services make sense for your business? You may well benefit from these providers. Find out by getting competitive quotes for fiber optic network services that meet your business needs.



Note: Photo of fiber optic conduit spools courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Gigabit Ethernet Port Scales WAN Bandwidth

When you are ready to make the move from copper to fiber bandwidth levels or upgrading an OC-3 SONET service, you are faced with a choice. What level of bandwidth do you install?

Why not give yourself flexibility for the future and the opportunity to pay only for what you need right now? This is what a Ethernet port strategy can do for you.

Scalability is a new idea in business telecom services. When you install a T1 line, it requires a very specific T1 interface that include a CSU/DSU circuit unique to the T1 line specifications. Upgrade to a T3 line (DS3 bandwidth) and you’ll find that you can’t just plug that T3 into your T1 router. The interface is completely different. Even the connecting cable is different. With DS3 you are looking at a pair of coaxial BNC connectors that don’t support any other service. Now, make yet another move on up to OC-3 service. Your router interfaces for T1 and T3 are no good. You need a fiber input to your router.

It doesn’t get any better when you start moving up the fiber optic hierarchy. You can’t just plug OC-12 or OC-48 into an OC-3 port and have everything spring to life. They are different services requiring modifications. You’ll likely need a new interface card and programming changes to your router. If you have a managed router, that probably means a truck roll to your premises to swap out the CPE (Customer Premises Equipment).

In the back of your mind, you must suspect it doesn’t have to be this way. Those new PCs have NICs (Network Interface Cards) labeled 10/100/1000 Mbps. That means that you can plug them into any LAN running at up to 1 Gbps and they’ll work just find. Even the connector takes the same RJ-45 patch cord. Wouldn’t that approach be far superior for WAN connections too?

This is the beauty of Carrier Ethernet, which includes Metro Ethernet, MPLS network access and long haul point to point connections. Ethernet beyond the LAN has been designed to be as flexible as Ethernet on the LAN.

One of Ethernet’s best features as a bandwidth service is ease of scaling. If you are running 50 Mbps service and find your needs have increased so that you now need 100 Mbps, you can just call up your service provider and request an upgrade. In a matter of hours or a day or two at the most, your WAN network speed will double. In that time, no one has knocked on the door with a new router under their arm. In fact, you haven’t seen anyone from the service provider. It was all done over the phone.

There is a trick to making this work. The magic is all in the installed Ethernet port. When you order Ethernet service, make sure that you have a port installed that will support the highest bandwidth you reasonably expect to be ordering down the road. Most ports are the standard Ethernet speeds of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1,000 Mbps. It’s also possible to get a 10,000 Mbps or 10 GigE port with a suitably fast managed router if your needs are that high.

With Ethernet over Copper, you are probably looking at a 100 Mbps Ethernet port at most. Be sure you know just what your maximum speed will be, because EoC is distance limited and requires more copper pairs as speed increases. Ask what bandwidth your installation will support compared to what you are ordering initially.

With Ethernet over Fiber, it likely makes sense to install a Gigabit Ethernet port. The fiber itself has more capacity that you are ever likely to employ. The speed of the port will be the limiting factor, along with the capability of the carrier’s equipment that feeds that port. Once again, it is smart to plan for the future but buy for today. Get the bandwidth you need now, but be sure that the system is engineered to allow for fast and easy upgrades as you need them. That will be especially handy if you get hit with a sudden increase in traffic or a need to support massive amounts of video or enormous file transfers that you didn’t anticipate.

Are you ready for a bandwidth upgrade, but unsure of what commitment to make? Give yourself some breathing room with a Gigabit Ethernet port and the ability to scale up your bandwidth as needed. Get prices and availability of Ethernet ports and line speeds now.